Archive for the ‘Tiphanie Yanique’ Category
The Land of Love and Drowning, by Tiphanie Yanique
published in 2014
where i got it: purchased new
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A cross hatching of mythology and consequence, Land of Love and Drowning is a family drama on the surface. Scratch away just a few layers and you find a family whose legacy is based on shattering secrets, children who know they are capable of doing horrible things, and a culture forced to a precipice. On the Caribbean island of St. Thomas lives the Bradshaw family, and their unmaking will becoming their making.
The Danish West Indies have just become the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Bradshaw family of St. Thomas is about to suffer two tragedies. Mrs. Bradshaw will give birth to a second daughter, and Mr. Bradshaw will drown when his ship goes down. Raised in luxury, older daughter Eeona attended finishing school, and knows how to walk, talk and pour tea like a proper lady. her beauty is known throughout the islands, and at first the suitors were quite literally lined up down the block. Hers is a beauty that can sink ships. The man she loves will never, and can never marry her, and when her father drowns, the suitors see a desperate fatherless daughter instead of the daughter of a shipping magnate. Offered a chance to finally make her own living, Mrs. Bradshaw takes her fashionable wares to America, to get her own contracts. She comes home ill and dying. Within the year, the sisters are orphaned and destitute. Eeona wants only what her father promised her, and baby Anette is too young to want anything at all.
Just as much as the story follows the family drama of the Bradshaw family, it follows the history of the island of St. Thomas of the Virgin Islands. In the early 1900s, the islands of St. Thomas, St. Croix, and St. John were literally sold to the United States, ceased to be the Danish West Indies and became the U.S. Virgin Islands. What could America bring to the islands, besides citizenship? How about Prohobition, a war, racism, sleazy movies, and capitalism, just to start.
the Little Red Reviewer 
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